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Who Killed the Electric Car? | 
 enlarge | Actor: Martin Sheen
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.94
Buy New: $7.00
You Save: $7.94 (53%)
New (53) Used (18) Collectible (1) from $6.88
Rating:  314 reviews
Sales Rank: 1370
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Dvd, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Subtitled)
Genre: none
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
ESRB: Teen
Region: 99
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 93 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: D15286D
UPC: 043396152861
EAN: 0043396152861
ASIN: B000I5Y8FU
Theatrical Release Date: 2006
Release Date: November 14, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In 1996, electric cars began to appear on raods all over California. They were quiet fast, produced no exhaust & ran without gasoline. 10 Years later, these futuristic cars were almost entirely gone. What happened? Why should we be haunted by the ghost of the electric car?
Amazon.com
It begins with a solemn funeral…for a car. By the end of Chris Paine's lively and informative documentary, the idea doesn't seem quite so strange. As narrator Martin Sheen notes, "They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline." Paine proceeds to show how this unique vehicle came into being and why General Motors ended up reclaiming its once-prized creation less than a decade later. He begins 100 years ago with the original electric car. By the 1920s, the internal-combustion engine had rendered it obsolete. By the 1980s, however, car companies started exploring alternative energy sources, like solar power. This, in turn, led to the late, great battery-powered EV1. Throughout, Paine deftly translates hard science and complex politics, such as California's Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate, into lay person's terms (director Alex Gibney, Oscar-nominated for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, served as consulting producer). And everyone gets the chance to have their say: engineers, politicians, protesters, and petroleum spokespeople--even celebrity drivers, like Peter Horton, Alexandra Paul, and a wild man beard-sporting Mel Gibson. But the most persuasive participant is former Saturn employee Chelsea Sexton. Promoting the benefits of the EV1 was more than a job to her, and she continues to lobby for more environmentally friendly options. Sexton provides the small ray of hope Paine's film so desperately needs. Who Killed the Electric Car? is, otherwise, a tremendously sobering experience. --Kathleen C. Fennessy Stills from Who Killed the Electric Car? (click for larger image) Writer/Director Chris Paine Blogs About Who Killed the Electric Car
 When Who Killed the Electric Car premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (on the same weekend as An Inconvenient Truth), we wondered whether movie goers were ready for a new kind of 'action film'. Fortunately people jumped onboard and this seems even more true today.
We put this DVD together after the release of the film to include a dozen short scenes we couldn't quite fit into our story. My favorite is one with Stan and Iris Ovshinsky who developed the revolutionary battery technology that powered GM's electric car (and today's Prius). These two brilliant octogenarians took our small camera crew on a Willy Wonka style tour of their inventions including the world's largest thin film solar cell factory. As we stood under a football field size machine in Troy Michigan, I blustered "Is solar power back?" Stan exclaimed " What?! Solar never went away... What was back was backward thinking!" And as his machine cranked out miles of solar cells above us, we knew he was right.
I'm especially glad that the optimistic last scene of Who Killed the Electric Car has proven that we weren't just wishful thinkers when we finished our edit. The clips feature the first glimpse of the ultra fast Tesla electric sports prototype as well the Zenn neighborhood electric vehicle. Both cars are starting to roll off production lines today. And while the State of California (and some car companies) are still gambling on hydrogen fuel cells, plug-in cars are proving to be more environmentally efficient and popular. Early adopters deserve a lot of the credit. Oil companies and the internal combustion engine monopoly may have "killed" thousands of electric cars (EVs) in the 1990s, but EVs are coming back. (Stay tuned for next film...)
I hope you'll find our documentary takes you on a wild ride out of the 20th century and into the 21st. --Chris Paine, Writer/Director
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| Customer Reviews: Read 309 more reviews...
 The Best Documentary June 22, 2009
D. Posluszny (Mass.)
This is by far the best documentary I have ever watched. I bought several copies to give away as gifts. It expains clearly why we don't have zero-emmission vehicles on the road. EV's work, and work well. Also, in the extras it explains why a Hydrogen future is a waste of time and money trying to develop. It is terrible that this technology is here, and proven, yet not on the road.
 Does for cars what Blue Gold does for water! June 1, 2009
K. Davis (Dunedin, FL)
I really loved the murder-mystery foundation of this film. It reminded me fondly of The Corporation and it's sociopath analysis of corporations as a person. But what I really loved about this film is the natural pacing and visual build of its message. It reminds me of one of my other favorite political films, Blue Gold World Water Wars, which also builds with a visual language of its own to a horrifying emotional end. See this film!
 EV1 cost GM over $100K each to make... no wonder. May 28, 2009
M. Gary
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
This movie forgot to ask GM how much it cost them to make each one of these EV1 cars. Bob Lutz (Chairman of GM) was recently on David Letterman (to talk about the EV1s and promo the volt)...
[...]
Lutz admits the overwhelming cost of the EV1 experiment and ADMITS the shortcomings (mostly the high cost) of the battery technology that was used. I'm pretty sure these California EV1 users weren't paying a $2000 per month to lease those EV1s... which is what you'd might pay for a $100K car. GM is also maintaining a staff to do the maintenance on the vehicles... no wonder they scrapped the project, simple economics. Do you think these EV1 users would have paid $100K for these EV1 cars to keep? ...no, the creators of this movie only had a $3000 budget... not like they were flush with cash. Do you think GM was going to maintain service personnel to fix these cars when there were only a few hundred on the road... no. Do you think GM was going to 'brag' about how much money they lost on EV1's to this documentary so all their shareholders could express their displeasure with this moneypit idea. Don't think so.
GM is going to go bankrupt anyway... but dropping HUNDREDS of MILLIONS on this effort just to try and appease California didn't help at all either. I think Lutz is right ...the ONLY way Americans will buy an electric vehicle is when gas is above $4/gal and stays there. Until then... there aren't enough Americans who care... unfortunately.
Must-See Documentary May 17, 2009
Isabel (Carefree, AZ)
This DVD should be required viewing for every US citizen. It is an excellent documentary of what has transpired and what continues to transpire in our auto industry. This is not just hearsay, as it includes interviews with several former GM employees who were part of the electric car experiment. It's very captivating and entertaining to watch; not just another boring documentary.
The electric car May 14, 2009
Nevy (St. Croix Virgin Islands)
Very informative video on why the electric car has not advanced much further than it should in the United States. It would be nice if there was a follow up video that shows the same or different trends in other countries.
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